This invention relates to distributed network communications and more particularly to using hidden markup attributes to communicate information to selected recipients of markup language documents.
Mark-up languages, such as Hyper-text Mark-up Language (HTML), Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML), Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), etc., are used throughout the electronic communications industry as languages in which to transmit communications over the Internet. A browser running at a receiving computer will receive the communication in the markup language and then convert the content for display to a user.
It is desirable, and often necessary, to incorporate information in the communication in addition to the content to be displayed. Addressing information in necessarily included; but, communications may also include user authentication certificates (e.g., Socket Security Layer or SSL), security hash algorithms for encoding or decoding the content data, and the like.
Communications would also preferably include such information as xe2x80x9cinstructionsxe2x80x9d for use by the web browser (e.g., designating what content to display). U.S. Pat. No. 6,009,441 provides a system and method for incorporating a token which is used to tell the web page editor whether or not to display certain accompanying data. Another approach is taught by U.S. Pat. No. 6,021,416, which provides automatic processing of a markup language tags for the purpose of displaying data to a user""s browser. Another U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,729 introduces an approach that, if there is user-specific additional information available, an additional fetch step is required for retrieval of that information.
It may also be desirable to have other information included in a communication, such as information for use by an administrator or a web content developer/designer to instruct the browser to hide sensitive data from some users or even to hide some non-sensitive received data from the user while implementing that received data (e.g., code to set links related to the data requested and displayed to the user). Yet another use of accompanying information would be to secure data for a general purpose authorization subsystem, to be used to exchange data between two users. Further, such additional information may be used to tailor a communication to a particular user machine (e.g., in the case of a traveling user who communicates from an office PC generally but uses a PDA while in transit) or to a particular user location (e.g., render a communication in English while the user is in the U.S., but in Spanish when the user is communicating from a machine in South America).
What is desirable, therefore, and what is an object of the present invention is to provide a system and method for including hidden markup language attributes to convey more information about browser handling of web content.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide the hidden markup language attributes in such a way as to be overlooked by non-intended users and/or browses.
Still another object of the invention is to provide the mechanism needed to decode hidden language attributes based on a user machine""s current locale configuration.
Another object of the invention is to provide the mechanism needed to decode hidden language attributes based on a user machine""s current font subsystem""s configuration with regard to displaying locale specific textual information.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide the mechanism needed to decode hidden language attributes based on a user machine""s current language configuration together with the markup content sent in a single step to the user""s browser.
The foregoing and other objects are realized by the present invention which includes a system and method for providing at least one hidden markup language attribute to convey additional information to target recipients. Under the present invention, at least one hidden markup language attribute is included in a communication from a server. When a browser at a client/user location receives the communication with the at least one hidden markup language attribute, the browser will be able to decode the hidden markup language attribute portion of the markup only if it has a correct render key. The render key may be predefined and exchanged between the server and the client, with the key residing at the client. Alternatively, the render key may be dynamically created by the server and communicated to the client together with the hidden markup language attribute communication or in a separate communication. The latter scenario is useful when a server must dynamically calculate the render key based upon the client""s capabilities (e.g., discovered during the establishment of communication between the entities). A server may alternatively use a generic default render key for all users to make use of select hidden markup language attributes.